Uncovered (Dev and Lee Book 4) (50 page)

Chapter 35–Coming Home (Dev)

The plane the next morning is tense. It’s earlier than we normally leave, which just reminds us that if we’d won, we’d be leaving at this time so we could get back for a full day of celebration in Chevali. Getting on, I end up three people behind Colin, and he keeps looking back at me. After he sits, I pass his seat and he pulls his tail in, staring away from me.

“You’re not going to catch anything,” I say loudly, staring down at him. Then, quieter, “Nothing you don’t already have.”

I move on past his seat, but he jumps up, ears back, and turns to grab my shirt. “You shut up,” he says. “I was just stopping my tail from getting stepped on.”

I yank my shirt away. “All I meant is you’re already a prick. You’re not going to catch that from touching me.”

He glares, and I glare back, and we both know what he meant by pulling his tail in, and what I meant with what I said. “Just stay away from me,” he says.

“Fine by me.”

“Come on,” Charm, behind me, pushes me forward. “Let’s go find something over the wing.”

I point back at Colin. “You better figure out your attitude pretty fast,” I say.

He doesn’t respond, just turns back to the front and slides down in his seat. Shit, I was hoping I’d be less fucking pissed at him, but I guess it’s gonna take more than a day. Hopefully a few months is enough. Or he’s right about one of us going to another team.

Looking back at his flattened ears, I think about him catching something from me and wish he could catch tolerance, and that leads me down a path of memory. I wasn’t so different from him back when Lee found me. Only difference is, where Lee was a proud person, someone who forced me to see him as a person and returned any care and investment I made in him, Argonne is a “discreet” fag, who reinforces Colin’s belief that gay sex is wrong by agreeing not to tell anyone about it, by giving blow jobs behind closed doors in secret.

So maybe this is how Lee goes down the road of exposing people’s secrets in public. Strike’s words come back to me: would I have wanted someone exposing my secret before I was ready? Not while I still held onto it, that’s for sure. But knowing what I know now, having had a great quick chat with Polecki and having a great boyfriend, or at least having had one for a while and hopefully soon again…maybe I would. But I can’t make that decision for anyone else.

Charm guides me to a pair of seats over the wing, just in front of where Ty is sitting staring out the window. Just to remind myself that there are good foxes on my team, I reach back over the seat. “Hey.”

He looks up, takes my paw after a second. “Hey, Dev.”

“Where’d you end up last night? I didn’t see you.”

He flicks his ears. “Wanted to be by myself.”

“You doing okay?”

“Yeah.” He manages a tight smile that just barely supports that response. “Tough loss. I’ll get over it.”

“You did great,” I tell him.

“You too,” he says, sort of automatically. “Great sack.”

“I don’t think anyone could’ve done better on that last play,” I say. “Returns are half luck anyway, but you’re the best return guy we’ve got. Bar none.”

His smile gets a little wider, and it looks like I’ve got his full attention again. “Thanks,” he says.

“We got a good team here, don’t we?” Charm turns to take in the two of us.

“Fuck yeah,” I say. “Hope we keep it together.”

“That’s fifty percent luck too,” Ty says. “Least I know I’m not moving unless they trade me.”

“Me neither. Rookie deals.” Thinking about being traded is mildly depressing. We could be gone in a month through no choice of our own. The owner and GM don’t care if we think we have a good team.

“Ha,” Charm says. “My agent says I’m gonna get a good payday when he negotiates the new deal for me.”

“Good luck.” I grin at Ty. “I would say we’re looking forward to seeing your numbers, but really, who gives a shit, kicker?”

“You wish you could get kicker money.” He smacks my arm.

We settle into our seats and get our iPods out. Looking down the aisle, it’s hard to see Colin’s ears above the heads of the rest of the team, but I can just make out the black points.

I turn and stare past Charm to the window. Outside, they’re preparing to take off, and the air is hazy with the C.C. smog. It almost feels like there’s smog inside the plane as well. Usually when we’re coming back, even after a loss, there’s energy in the plane. We joke around, we mess with each other, we talk about next week. Now, of course, there is no next week, and we’re probably all thinking about how tantalizingly close we came to winning a championship.

Flashes of the game still run through my head. I think they always will, at least until I get back. I can’t change them, but I can work my damnedest to make sure that next time I get to a championship, I have no regrets when I walk off that field.

“Hey,” Charm says, as I’m still staring across his chest to the window, “you wanna check out my pecs, do it in the shower like everyone else does.”

“Don’t need to,” I say. “I just went to the Firebird Groupies web page. They got pics up all over.”

He snorts. “I
wish
they had a page. I’d be on that thing every day.”

I grin and lean back, closing my eyes as the plane taxis and takes off.

When we level off, Coach tries to give us a speech to get us excited for the future of the Firebirds, but it falls flat. Some of the guys are already listening to music, and while I appreciate the things he’s saying with my mind—stuff like “this loss doesn’t define us as a team” and “we’ll be back here for sure”—it doesn’t reach the place inside where I keep thinking about all those teams that only made it to one championship game, and lost.

I know the other guys are thinking about it, too, and that reminds me about Fisher, and how this might have been his last game, and then it occurs to me that I didn’t see him on the plane. I push myself out of my seat and look around, and sure enough, there’s only the other tiger from the second team, toward the back of the plane.

The defensive coordinator is sitting near me, talking to the line coach, and I wave to get his attention. “Hey, you know what happened to Fisher?”

He nods. “Went home with his family, I think. He told me he was going to miss the plane.”

“Is he okay?”

“Okay enough to not have to go to the hospital, I guess.” He shrugs. “He’ll have plenty of time to heal up.”

I sink back into my seat. I feel somewhat relieved. I guess I’ll have to call Gena when I get back, too. Then I wonder if “plenty of time to heal up” means they’re not bringing him back. I try to keep that out of my mind for the rest of the short flight home.

We land in bright sun that streams through the windows. In silence, we grab our bags and sunglasses and file off the plane—

—and into a small crowd of a hundred or so people dressed in red and gold, holding banners and signs and Firebirds pennants. I first notice them as a low cheering noise when the first guys step off the plane onto the tarmac, and then as I make my way down the stairs, sunglasses on to protect against the brightness of the entire world outside, the crowd comes into focus.

The signs read, “Go Firebirds,” “You’re Our Champions,” and some signs for individual players. There isn’t one for me, but I do get a cheer when I step out into the light. Maybe they think I’m Fisher. No, no, I hear my name in the cheers. It’s comforting and flattering.

And as Charm steps off, they give him a big cheer too, and call his name. And the next guy gets a cheer, and the next guy, and Ty gets a big one, and they keep cheering for us as we walk toward the airport. Some people are holding out footballs and scraps of paper, so a few of us go over for autographs.

There are little groups of the same species: foxes, wolves, bears, coyotes. Brick goes over to the bears and signs there, with Pike and Kodi; Ty spends time with the foxes, next to Vonni and, a moment later, Colin. Aston signs for the wolves, although really he’s in demand with everyone, and so is Jaws, even though there aren’t any wolverines in the little group. I spot tigers standing with cougars, and since Fisher’s not on the flight, I walk over and sign my name on season tickets, footballs, autograph books. One older tiger says, “It was just such a thrill to see the Firebirds in the championship again.” A young female tiger says, “You were so close!”

“Thanks,” I say over and over, “thanks for supporting the team.” I shake paws and sign my name, and am about to move on when I notice a skinny kangaroo rat fidgeting, sandwiched between the bears and tigers. His ear is scarred near the base, and his Cläwz t-shirt is torn at the shoulder. But he’s smiling, and he’s looking at me, and he looks away when I look right at him, that way you do when you want to get someone’s attention but you’re afraid or self-conscious about it. So I take a step over to him while the big cats wave at Marais and he ambles over to them.

“Got something for me to sign?” I ask.

“Nah, I…” He keeps smiling, but stares down at the ground, tail curling around his legs. His voice is high and shaky. I’d put him at sixteen or seventeen, maybe. “I can’t believe I’m talking to you.”

I keep my professional smile on. “Thanks for coming out to support the team.”

“Oh,” he says, “I don’t really like football. I mean, I didn’t. I watched the game. I wish you’d have won.”

“Yeah, me too.” I feel like I should move on, but I’m curious now. “So if you’re not a fan, why’d you watch the game?”

“I watched it with my dad.” He gestures back to the back of the crowd, where an older kangaroo rat is standing with a banner. “He’s a fan.”

“Well, thank him for me,” I say, and half-turn to go.

“Wait!”

I stop and smile, because obviously the kid has something to say and it’s hard for him to get out. “The bus is waiting for me,” I say.

“I know, I just wanted to say…thanks.”

That can’t be all, so I wait. He fidgets more and then drops his voice. “I came out ’cause of you.”

My professional smile falters. “Uh. You did?” He nods quickly. “Well. That’s great.”

That encourages him. He looks up and smiles, showing a chipped tooth on the side where his ear is torn. “My dad loves football and he was going on about you and how it was a disgrace and I just couldn’t take it, so I came out to him. It was rough…” The torn ear flicks. “I had to go live with a friend for a couple weeks. But then I moved back in and he said he’s starting to understand it, and I feel, I feel so much better now, I mean, I can really be who I am. Like before I was in this shell and I thought I couldn’t ever get out of it and I couldn’t talk to anyone about it but you, you…” He gestures with skinny paws while I struggle to stay composed. “You gave me a way to get out, someone I could point to and tell my dad, ‘I’m like him,’ and it was
so hard
but it got easier…” He giggles nervously. “I’m sorry, I’m talking too much, I just, I wanted to say thanks. You saved my life.”

I feel Lee at my side, and the annoying thing is I can hear him talking, see his brilliant smile as he says exactly the right thing to complete this kid’s experience. But I can’t hear the words, and all I’m left with is my own fucking tongue, which stutters a bit and then says, “I’m really glad. I mean, thank you. I’m glad it worked out for you.”

Imaginary-Lee says,
R
eally, stud? He says you saved his life and you say ‘I’m glad it worked out’?
I tell him to put a fucking sock in it, because the kid’s smiling and wants to know if he can hug me. Maybe that’ll make up for me not having any of the right words. So I wrap an arm around his shoulders and he clings to me and it’s awkward and uncomfortable, but when I step back, he’s bouncing, so I guess it was okay.

“Thanks! Thanks so much!” He bounces back to his dad. I meet the older rat’s eyes for a moment, and he inclines his head. I raise a paw to wave. And for a moment, to my surprise, I feel pretty great.

The people around, mostly bears and tigers, give me big smiles, and Pike, standing a couple yards away, does too. Even Brick shoots me a thumbs-up in between autographs. In the bright light, eyes and smiles shine out from the crowd at me, but then, all of the fans here who came out to see us have shining eyes and smiles and more. They’re not just here to get autographs; they’re here to give back to us, to tell us that even though we came up one point short, they’re still our fans, still proud of us.

Proud of us. I think back to the people who have said that to me recently, and whether I let it really sink in. A handwritten note flashes into my memory; I let it linger for a moment. It’s probably still sitting on top of my trash. I feel bad about that. I resolve to take it out when I get home.

Then we’re in the airport, out of the sun and in the cool building. On the wall of the arrival lounge, the airport personnel have put up a huge banner saying, “Welcome Back Firebirds,” and all the employees have signed it with little messages.

Some of the guys stop and look, others just walk on by, already on their phones. I take a moment and read some of the messages. I can’t help but smile. There’s pressure in this job, but sometimes, even if you don’t come out on top, the people will still love you. Even if you’re a gay football player. I touch the spot on my ribs where I can still feel the kid’s hug. Maybe especially if you’re a gay football player.

It’s hard to make myself walk on. After this banner, we’ll all be going our separate ways, some of us on a bus back to where our trucks are parked, some of us getting picked up by spouses. It’s like the end of school, except that vacation is a prelude now, not a goal. My ribs ache, my foot twinges, and the day-after soreness pervades my body, made worse by the plane flight. But there’s no workout tomorrow, no stretching and camaraderie and film study. My playbook isn’t in my bag; it’s in the massive trunks the team shipped back separately with the equipment, our helmets and uniforms and all the things going into storage for a few months.

A paw lands on my shoulder. My whiskers twitch, and I turn to see Gerrard, Carson trailing behind him. “Take a week or so,” he says, “then workouts at my place a few times a week?”